Grand Campaign Unit Revisions - Update for GC42-43West

[nikivdd]

I have been testing the '39 e-file and i am really enthousiastic. I rescripted some of my '39 scenario's and where i used a 2:1 ratio of units in favor of the enemy, it is now more close to 1:1. It is good to see that the polish units are far more active to stop the "german" player and can give some real hard punches. Overall i am re-learning panzer corps gameplay due to the new "e-file" reality. Before i wouldn't mind to reinforce core units during gameplay, but this is no longer the case. When they are too heavily damaged, i retreat them to the rear to fight another day. I also like the ammo adjustments for the planes. I no longer let units venture off alone, it became too dangerous. I'm always conducting my tests on Colonel level but the e-file makes it much more challenging than before. Between scenario's i'm more reluctant to use elite reinforcements and i'm thinking twice to upgrade to a different unit family. I already wonder how the confrontation will be with the Norwegians.
I'm already anxious to test the '40 e-file against french and british armor . It feels like i have discovered Panzer Corps for the second time.

[orlinos]

I have been testing the '39 e-file and i am really enthousiastic. I rescripted some of my '39 scenario's and where i used a 2:1 ratio of units in favor of the enemy, it is now more close to 1:1. It is good to see that the polish units are far more active to stop the "german" player and can give some real hard punches.

Fighting the cavalry in Kampinos felt like facing monsters in horror movies. (Raid: Redemption, anyone?).

Overall i am re-learning panzer corps gameplay due to the new "e-file" reality.[...] Between scenario's i'm more reluctant to use elite reinforcements and i'm thinking twice to upgrade to a different unit family. I already wonder how the confrontation will be with the Norwegians.

I did the same you did - often retreating heavily wounded units. The Norwegian battles are still easy in vanilla, if you stay slow and careful. There is plenty of time, no need to rush in the snow.

I found it wise to invest in a second fighter, though - to either protect the troops and definitely to protect the Stukas. Keeping them healthy - but well-overstrenght - was one of the keys of easy victories for me.

I would be careful with using ordinary replacements. The strenght of German army in the 39-40 lies in their experience. On my first play with -50% prestige (with vannila e-file) I rarely used e-replacements, because I felt no difference between elite and green troops. This time, I have found it's might be better to keep the troops elite - I just didn't invest in the best equipment. It's so much cheaper to have an overstrenght PzII, than even an inexperienced PzIII. So i kept cheap artillery, less transports for non-SE infantry etc.

I'm already anxious to test the '40 e-file against french and british armor . It feels like i have discovered Panzer Corps for the second time.

The same with me!
It's going to be nasty, believe me. The key (for me) was avoiding confrontation with heavy armor. I would kill it with Stukas, infantry (in close terrain) and occasionally with an '88. I used my armor only as screeners of transports, rather than true fighters.

Wassigny was very funny this time. I had a well prepared defense, I lost no troops (although one of my artillery got pummeled heavily by those treacherous, sneaky French), my experienced troops were able to stop numerous attacks breaking no sweat... but I made an error counting movement and Giraud's unit was one turn late to the victory hex.

And since I left many towns, making a tactical retreat, I turned an easy victory into a loss.

[orlinos]

Report on the new recon treatment.

I do not want to be all negative, but I'm having second thoughts on the idea. Right now I'm playing the Sevastopol Siege scenario.

The way I use recon units myself has not changed. I didn't have much problems keeping them alive in '42 up to this point (although I was very careful with them). I would lose one occasionally, but always due to me being sloppy - or I intentionally sacrificed them to achieve some goal etc.

After the changes I am still careful – the recon can survive more but it expensive.

The AI does the opposite. It drives it’s recon right next to my series III tanks, because it knows they won’t put a dent in it. Neither will the AT units.

Now, some of this recon is the combat, hard type – I have no problems with that. And I can kill it easily. The soft ones are hard to deal with, especially since they have 13 strength points. I only have one Panzer IV and even it won’t do much damage to the recon. Panzer III’s – they will be killing it very slowly, while loosing some strength themselves (which is expensive for me).

Now, I managed to retreat some of the recon to the forest – it’s very easy to kill it with infantry there, true.

But something does not ring right. There was a nasty KV attack on me at the airport in the north. I bombarded AA next to it with artillery and a tactical bomber, bombarded the KV with a 14-strength Ju-87, encircled it and managed to enforce a surrender – all with rather crappy units I placed there. I only lost 4 strength points of one auxillary Matilda tank. Piece of cake.

At the same time, 3 recons (2 soft type) managed to stop the half of my army in their tracks.

Well, I’m back to testing, it might just be a quirk of this one scenario, but I’m afraid of what you oneself have predicted some time ago, Deducter. A well placed soft recon will be able to stop a whole groups of panzers, being more dangerous than a big tank or an AT.

[orlinos]

Ok, I'll try to give some constructive ideas, so as not only to criticize.

I've not yet played 43-45 DLC's – event with vanilla equipment. From what I know from the forum (and history lessons), the Germans get their ass kicked hard at that time. And the panzers get really big and dangerous – making the recon so fragile – hence the changes.

But is this the case with early DLC’s? My recon was quite formidable in ’39, although now I believe I might have been able to save more prestige if I used a cheaper Panzer II on offensive. It was only a little more fragile in DLC ’40 – I would take more care of it.

In 1941 – I had to take even more care of it and it stopped being useful on offense (except to enforce surrender) – but the special movement still allowed it to do recon missions. It’s the same in 1942, at least until now (Sevastopol).

I have two ideas.

1) Using the new recon system work only in the late DLC’s. Obviously, it makes the rules change in the middle of the war – which is very bad. I don’t like the idea myself.

2) Taking the new system away from the AI. It doesn’t use the recon movement anyway. Until now, all AI recons having increased spotting - at least made the AI more informed of my actions. AI recons would die fast, but it was harder for me to suprise the computer.

The new system gives the player a very useful – but expensive tool – that’s great.

But to the AI - it gives special wonder units – a fast and mobile “tank”, with little ammo, but with heavy defenses thus making the player go out of one’s way to kill it.

[deducter]

Yeah, the recon system is problematic for the AI to handle. From my personal testing, the recon system works fine for the German player. It works just like intended: recon are expensive, elite units that are much more survivable.

The problem is, there is no way of allowing recon units to survive being 1 or 2-shotted by late war tanks without changing them to soft targets. So the question is, what is the lesser of evils here? In fact, now that I'm thinking about it, recon units are still potentially problematic, because if you attack with them into a ISU-122 or SU-100 then you can deplete the ammo, which is something a good player can take advantage of. This isn't necessarily a bad thing though, I already do this type of stuff with infantry, so doing it with a recon isn't necessarily worse.

So the question is, what is better, the old system where recon is cheap but easy to kill, or the new system where recon is hard to kill but expensive.

I applied the same rules to the AI. There are problems here. The best way to kill recon units is with high SA units like the Panzer IIIN and the Panzer IV series, or to bombard them with artillery and force them to retreat into close terrain. I'm not liking this type of quirk personally. Here are the ways I could solve this:

1)Lower the GD of the AI's recon units, so they are much, much easier to kill. The BA-64 would probably have GD of 8 in this case in 1943, the others even lower. The T-60/T-70 series remain the same.

2)Change all AI's recon units back to hard targets. Then the AI's recon units go back to being 1-shot kills.

3)Lower the ammo of the AI's dedicated recon units so you can exhaust them faster, then you can hit away with your troops until they die. The BA-64 would have 3 ammo like all the other dedicated recon units.

I'm also thinking the German player's recon units need to cost even more, and maybe differentiate some of the early war and late war models a bit more.

[deducter]

The best way to solve the recon unit problem is that have customizable unit traits. I'd add one to recon units such that the HA of the unit they are being attacked by is capped at 10. Perhaps we should clamor for customizable unit traits instead.

[nikivdd]

If i can add my 2c for now i would chose option 3. In 44-45 i still had several PzIIIN in my core because of their CD and SA. And i always had a soft spot for PzIVH/J as well:).
I don't know but it just an idea if there would be any effect to add the trait "green" to those sov recons?

[deducter]

If i can add my 2c for now i would chose option 3. In 44-45 i still had several PzIIIN in my core because of their CD and SA. And i always had a soft spot for PzIVH/J as well:).
I don't know but it just an idea if there would be any effect to add the trait "green" to those sov recons?

Yes, they would start out with 0 stars in every scenario. It would effectively lower their GD, but I don't like that particular solution as a fix.

I'm thinking of some combination of 1 and 3.

[orlinos]

The best way to solve the recon unit problem is that have customizable unit traits. I'd add one to recon units such that the HA of the unit they are being attacked by is capped at 10. Perhaps we should clamor for customizable unit traits instead.

Having more customization options available would obviously be great, just seeing how much the game can already be changed with “simple” mods like yours. It would also help solving the close terrain AT problem that was discussed earlier.

Yeah, the recon system is problematic for the AI to handle. From my personal testing, the recon system works fine for the German player. It works just like intended: recon are expensive, elite units that are much more survivable.

Exactly. If I was facing a human player in the Sevastopol scenario, playing some imaginary Russian campaign against me, worried about carrying enough prestige to survive incoming scenarios – like I am – he wouldn’t behave like the AI did. It would be much better to stop the enemy’s tanks with lots of cheap AT, defended by good artillery, with few AA around, to discourage my air units.

So the question is, what is better, the old system where recon is cheap but easy to kill, or the new system where recon is hard to kill but expensive.

1)Lower the GD of the AI's recon units, so they are much, much easier to kill. The BA-64 would probably have GD of 8 in this case in 1943, the others even lower. The T-60/T-70 series remain the same.

2)Change all AI's recon units back to hard targets. Then the AI's recon units go back to being 1-shot kills.

3)Lower the ammo of the AI's dedicated recon units so you can exhaust them faster, then you can hit away with your troops until they die. The BA-64 would have 3 ammo like all the other dedicated recon units.

I see you and nikivdd do not like the solution nr 2. I would rather prefer it - reverting to vanilla behavior in this aspect.

The trouble is, the recon is supposed to be a unit which runs away at the sight of danger. It’s dangerous because of its spotting, making it hard to sneak upon the enemy. But it shouldn’t be a nuisance – which it might become now (I should test more than one scenario to tell for sure, of course).

My recons run away, I’m not stupid and I care for prestige. The AI doesn’t. There are many preplaced recon units in Kerensky’s scenarios. So many, because he knew them to be crap units – not able to survive for long, but capable of exploiting errors in flank protection – going for the artillery etc. And so many, because they give AI enough information about the player , that it doesn’t act blindly, until they die.

I am not a great fan of 3) (ammo lowering) since it would still mean spending much time beating poor Russian recon to finally die. Because the AI probably won’t retreat them.

I remember doing something like that with big KV’s in Spoils of War and other scenarios. Or with some well entrenched and very lucky infantry, which would still have 1 strength point after being heavily bombarded and attacked multiple times by all my infantry. But it was OK – KV was a special beast, to be slowly, laboriously killed by my inferior forces. The infantry were glorious heroic defenders, still holding ground despite impending doom. It felt great from a “storytelling” perspective.

Those recon at the beginning of Sevastopol were just boring to kill.

[deducter]

Changing the AI's recon units back to hard would fix a lot of the quirks, like the Panzer IIIN being amazing at killing recon while the Panther is much less effective. Perhaps this is the lesser of the sins.

[orlinos]

Changing the AI's recon units back to hard would fix a lot of the quirks, like the Panzer IIIN being amazing at killing recon while the Panther is much less effective. Perhaps this is the lesser of the sins.

I hope more players will share their views, I'm new here and I'm already trying to influence the mechanics of a well-known mod.

I remember being very pissed of your changes in the ROF of '88, but it turned out very good. Achieving air supremacy is rather easy in early DLC's, even for a player like me, but never again is it "hit'em with AA, shoot each with a fighter, with no losses -> say good bye to enemy air after the first or second turn of the game".

Here the AI is definitely making problems, though. My Pz IIIJ just got attacked by an aggressive BA-64 or something - and lost one point, while inflicting maybe two points of damage. These things cost serious money, you know!

[deducter]

Lowering the GD of the AI's recon units while keeping them as soft targets makes them easier to kill with infantry and high SA units, especially the StuH 42 in assault mode. It's a very odd, unintuitive system, and I'm not sure I like it. Perhaps it really is the best to just change all of the AI's recon back to hard targets.

I'm going to think this over, and maybe hear some more feedback, and I'll have another version out tomorrow probably.

[deducter]

After some thoughts, I think this will be the best way to improve the recon system:

1. Switch all AI recon units back to hard, and all of them will have spotting = 4. The fact is that the AI is incapable of using the recon units like recon, so I will have to treat them more like tanks.

2. Add family to the German dedicated and combat recon units, so you can upgrade them without losing experience throughout the years. Dedicated recon will be one family, combat will be another. Price of the final two recon models will increase somewhat.

3. Slightly reduce defenses of German recon in 1943.

[nikivdd]

After some thoughts, I think this will be the best way to improve the recon system:

1. Switch all AI recon units back to hard, and all of them will have spotting = 4. The fact is that the AI is incapable of using the recon units like recon, so I will have to treat them more like tanks.

2. Add family to the German dedicated and combat recon units, so you can upgrade them without losing experience throughout the years. Dedicated recon will be one family, combat will be another. Price of the final two recon models will increase somewhat.

3. Slightly reduce defenses of German recon in 1943.

Sounds good to me. Battles are not won by recons only. Perhaps a later game update will allow to add new traits and the AI will use recons as recons .

[deducter]

Updated to v1.72. AI recon units changed back to hard, all of them have spotting = 4. In 1943 the Russians get a bonus to their GD for their recon units, although this is hardly noticeable except if the German player is using green panzers. Also added upgrade family for German combat recon units and Dedicated recon units. Those are two separate families. Panzer IILuchs does not belong to either family.

[nikivdd]

Thanks for the update.
I was wondering what changes were made in the gamerules.pzdat?
Also, what can you recommend on prestige caps for 39,40,...,45 from a german core's point of view.
Third, would it not seem more appropriate to play the mission(s) in norway with the '40 efile?

[deducter]

The gamerules.pzdat has the experience rule changes and the upgrade penalty, see the manual chapter for "rule changes" for details. 1939-1941 all share the same efile.

As for prestige caps, well, I never thought about that. But if I were to design the game, I'd allow no more than 4k for 1939, 6k for 1940, and 10k for 1941. And even that is quite generous.

[ivanov]

I have updated to 1.72 and started the DLC 44 but most of the recons ( except for Luchs ) are still soft targets...

[deducter]

I have updated to 1.72 and started the DLC 44 but most of the recons ( except for Luchs ) are still soft targets...

I only changed the AI's recon units to hard. This was because it took too long for the player to kill these units, which the AI uses in a manner similar to tanks. Furthermore, it lead to some weird situations where the StuH 42 for instance was the best German unit to kill recon cars, while a Panther did much, much worse.

Most of the player's recon units are still soft because I think it works well to reduce the one-shot kill problem with late war Soviet tanks. The exception is the Panzer II Luchs, which is cheaper, but has more ammo, tracked-movement, and decent attack.

So it sounds like it is working as intended.

[ivanov]

Ah, ok - I thought you wanted to change also the players recons to hard targets aswell. All in all, the changes look very good to me.